Farewell, to a true Northumbrian
Stewart at his favourite pub, The Ship at Low Newton
First published in edition 204 of The Northumbrian, Feb/Mar 2025
Friends and colleagues pay tribute to Stewart Bonney, founder of The Northumbrian back in 1987, who has died
Ian Kerr writes:
Everyone connected with The Northumbrian, both past and present, has lost an old and true friend with the death of Stewart Bonney, the magazine’s inspiration, founder and long-time editor.
Stewart, who was 78, passed away on December 7. He continued to work for his beloved publication right to the end, and it will be a lasting legacy to his courage and determination in taking the plunge and launching it back in the winter of 1987.
As someone who’d known Stewart for over half a century, I use that word courage quite deliberately. Launching such a magazine on an unknown market was a tremendous financial risk – but then Stewart always did like a gamble.
Many people told him that if there was a place for such a publication someone else with deeper pockets would already have done it. Others argued that if it was to have any chance of success it would have to appeal to the “county set,” with society engagements, weddings, hunt balls, the great and good and corporate affairs all featuring prominently. In other words, be exactly the same as so many other glossy and lifestyle magazines up and down the land.
Those pessimists completely misunderstood Stewart’s bold idea. His magazine was to be very different. It was designed to appeal to everyone who loved Northumberland for its rugged but beautiful countryside, varied landscapes, history, wildlife, crafts, local food, humour, quirkiness and, above all, for the fascinating range of local people making it England’s finest place to live and work.
When the great and good featured it wouldn’t be for whom they were, but for the interesting things they were doing or had already achieved.
The magazine was to become a global champion for Northumberland under the front cover slogan of “Fine Writing - Great Photography - Quality Reading,” promoting the county in a gentle and unobtrusive way that no huge tourism advertising budget could ever achieve.
In that first issue Stewart summed up his philosophy, declaring: “True Northumbrians, wherever they live, share a strong pride in their heritage.” He was right, as more than 200 issues so far have proved, with regular readers across Britain and among exiles in places as far apart as Canada, the United States, Europe, Australia, Kenya and Hong Kong.
That first edition set the standard, including features on Amble, Allendale, Belsay Hall, the College Valley and Rothbury as well as a piece by me on kingfishers. That makes me, I’m afraid, the only writer from that first edition still regularly contributing to the magazine, beating my colleague John Grundy by one edition.
Photographs for the kingfisher article were provided by Stewart’s friend and neighbour, wildlife photographer Rob Jordan, who also provided the front cover for that winter first issue, a suitably snowy scene. Rob, who I knew from his previous existence as a sergeant and wildlife crime officer with Northumbria Police, went on to provide many photographs over the years.
Stewart was born in Newcastle in April 1946 and went to the old Rutherford Grammar School where, he loved to tell everyone, his education came to an abrupt end in the sixth form when the head took a very dim view of him acting as an undercover bookie operating, rather appropriately you might think, from the school library.
He went on to work for an insurance company and news organisations in London and elsewhere before returning to Newcastle in the early 1970s to work as a reporter on The Journal. In 1975, he set up his own freelance news agency supplying regional stories for the national press and other news outlets and was joined in 1978 by another ex-Journal colleague, Dave Simpson.
They later set up a public relations arm, Powdene Publicity, named after the building just off the Bigg Market in the centre of Newcastle where they had their offices. The launch of The Northumbrian followed in 1987. The company ‘s activities were varied, from representing one of Britain’s biggest house-builders and the Club and Institute Union (CIU), the umbrella organisation for social and workingmen’s clubs, to publishing a wide range of books on coast, country and national parks, and a Good Pubs guide.
Stewart took over running the CIU’s regular publication, Club Journal, turning it into a profitable success. He also launched an annual beer festival and charity race meetings at Doncaster and Wetherby which continue 30 years on. He even created an event where barmaids ran the final furlong carrying a pint of beer on a tray, and he promoted an annual gender-neutral Star of the Bar competition.
But whenever I met Stewart at this busy time his mind was always on the next edition of his beloved magazine. He loved to write his own features about walks in the county which he faithfully tried out and mapped so readers could enjoy them too.
He was always buzzing with ideas about new features and picking brains about who might be available to tackle new subjects of interest. He was always determined to make sure the magazine was perfect, hiring experienced sub-editors to pounce on any of us writers who might transgress the Queen’s English (I suppose that is now the King’s English) or dare to commit the cardinal sin of an apostrophe in wrong place.
While Stewart was the front man for The Northumbrian, back at home at Espley, near Morpeth, his wife, Norma was doing the quiet but vital administration work and dealing with subscriptions from across the world.
While the magazine was designed to appeal to everyone who loved the county, Stewart also used it to raise many thousands of pounds for a charity in Ghana to provide a school to benefit hundreds of pupils. On one visit to his home, he proudly showed me the ceremonial robes he and Norma had been presented with as honorary local chieftains in recognition of their work.
When the quarterly and later bi-monthly magazine was delivered to the office from the printer what followed was affectionately known as “stuffing day.” The entire staff and anyone else who happened to make the mistake of going into the office that day was pressed into service to get thousands of copies into envelopes for posting.
Thousands of others were delivered commercially to major retailers while Stewart himself took on the role of delivery man for dozens of small outlets in village shops, post offices and community hubs, dropping off a dozen here and perhaps half a dozen elsewhere in a task that took several days.
The amazing thing was that very few of those customers knew that the delivery man unloading their small batch from the back of his vehicle was the editor himself. All journalists learn very early in their training to dread the sentence: “I’ve got a good story for you.” You instinctively know that in 99 cases out of 100 they haven’t got a story at all, just a bee in their bonnet about something.
Stewart always recalled how this happened to him while dropping off his small consignment at a remote village shop. He listened carefully and then told the eager informant, keeping a very straight face: “That’s very interesting; I’ll mention it to the editor when I get back!”
When relaxing, Stewart was seldom without his pipe, though in recent years with smoking in the workplace banned, he faced a problem. At the magazine’s last office, he kept his pipe on a window ledge outside the front door. If you called in to see him and the pipe was missing, so was the consulting editor, as he’d then become.
Barbara Grainger, who has worked for the magazine since the 1990s, said: “He and Norma were always so kind and caring, more like family really. Many of our long-standing advertisers and subscribers are always asking after them.”
Stewart’s involvement in horse racing and having a flutter has already been mentioned and there was nothing he liked better than a day at the races with family and friends. On one occasion he had us fascinated by telling us he’d bought a part share in a racehorse. Naturally, we asked which part of the beast was his. His reply was typical of him: “The leg that’ll probably go lame.”
He was also a keen gardener and an enthusiastic angler, and told me when he retired in 2019 and handed over the magazine to our current editor and proprietor, Jane Pikett, that he intended to spend much more time fishing at his favourite spots around reservoirs and lakes.
I was able to remind him of one very cold winter day, meeting him by chance with his rod huddled on a bank at Whittle Dene Reservoirs. I was out with my telescope looking for a rare duck, which I didn’t manage to find. After a fruitless hour or so Stewart commented: “I don’t know which of us is the dafter: me sitting here freezing and not catching anything or you standing there freezing looking for a duck that isn’t there.”
Stewart and Norma were wonderful hosts. Once a year they’d organise a lunch party for the magazine’s contributors and their partners. It was a great chance to catch up with various members of the staff and other regular writers such as Susie White, John Grundy, Tony Toole and many others over the years. Norma always provided a wonderful spread while Stewart would be dashing around making sure everyone’s glass was full. Stewart was always a very thoughtful host, keeping a handy parking place for me right outside the front door to help my late wife, first on sticks and later in her wheelchair.
I recall telling him in 2019 when he was officially “retiring” that he’d never really retire. We old writers just seem to go on and on for as long as we can hit a keyboard and see a screen. True enough, after handing over control he remained as the consulting editor and carried on providing the book review pages until illness intervened.
His funeral took place at the Northumberland Crematorium near Felton on December 18 where in a celebration of his life his old school friend Peter Heaviside spoke for everyone in saying that The Northumbrian will be his lasting legacy. Our sympathies go to Norma and their children Laura and Peter and daughter-in-law Jeri.
I’m grateful to Barbara Grainger, Dave Simpson, Chris Brewis and John Watson for their help in writing this tribute to our friend and colleague Stewart.
Stewart Bonney
Susie White writes:
It was thanks to Stewart Bonney that I began writing, when in 1988 he gave me my first column about growing herbs. For each issue of The Northumbrian, I’d choose and illustrate a different plant, which was a wonderful commission for someone who was just starting out as a writer. Stewart was kindly and encouraging, and he gave me enough confidence for my first book a few years later.
That was Stewart’s nature: laid-back, funny and generous. He held wonderful get-togethers for Northumbrian contributors at his house, his wife Norma serving a delicious spread, Stewart distributing drinks and smoking his pipe. It was a chance for us to meet each other and in summer to look round their woodland edge garden.
When I visited we would wander around the garden, looking at the vegetables, the compost heap, the flowers, the pond. One year Stewart was pestered by a hare that, even once he had netted the veg bed, would lie on the netting so that it could munch away on the crop. Typical of Stewart, he was frustrated by it, but in a good-humoured way.
Another time, I was staying the night because I was giving a talk to Morpeth Gardening Club. As we stood at the window at breakfast time, we spent half an hour watching a sparrowhawk perched on the bird table. The garden meant a lot to Stewart and the pond was a source of delight to him and Norma, with birds drinking and marsh marigolds bright around the edges.
Horse racing was an interest that Stewart shared with my husband David, and he invited us to the races at Gosforth and Hexham when he had horses running. One memorable time, as we stood in the owner’s enclosure, smoke started to pour from Stewart’s tweed jacket – he had tucked his pipe into a pocket and set it on fire!
On a trip to the borders to look at a horse that Stewart was thinking of buying, David remembers how on the journey he talked about how deeply he had always felt for Northumberland. He gave the county this magazine, passing on that love of its landscape, people and stories, its eclectic and fascinating content, to readers worldwide.
Peter Hetherington writes:
He was a quiet, unassuming Northumberland journalist with a passion for publishing. Stewart Bonney always wanted to run a newspaper. Instead, he launched a highly successful countryside magazine. It became a global champion of his beloved county.
Today, after 204 editions, Stewart has a lasting legacy – the bi-monthly Northumbrian, dedicated to places and people; rich in history, nature, and endearingly quirky. Stewart developed a small publishing house, producing books ranging from the coast and countryside of Northumberland to the county’s best pubs. In 2001, he launched a magazine devoted to national parks around the world, and attended international conferences where the publication was highly commended.
After completing each edition of The Northumbrian, invariably writing parts of it, he would spend days delivering copies to outlets around the county, meeting retailers and customers along the way, while his wife, Norma, worked as subscriptions manager.
Born in Fenham, Newcastle, only son of Charles, who worked at Vickers, and Olive (née McFarlane) employed at Fenwick’s department store, Stewart was educated at Rutherford Grammar School. He left for London in his late teens and became an office boy at Reuters news agency where he developed a passion for journalism. That took him first to a weekly newspaper in Weston-super-Mare, then to Newcastle in the early 1970s to become a reporter on The Journal, the regional daily. This was followed by a spell with the Daily Mail in Manchester. He returned to Newcastle in 1975 and set up a news agency serving national newspapers, then a publishing arm producing books, and a public relations consultancy.
In 2019 Stewart finally relinquished the Northumbrian editorship and retired after 169 editions, while remaining consultant editor. Jane Pikett, current editor and owner, remembers a modest, thoughtful, talented and hands-on journalist. “He was so self-effacing, yet he had the vision to create this unique magazine which is loved by readers all over the world. He had an instinct for what his readers wanted and we will continue to treasure The Northumbrian, as he did.”
Stewart had an abiding passion for horse racing, and gardening, maintaining a sizeable vegetable plot beside the family home at Espley, near Morpeth. A meticulous man, he kept detailed annual crop rotation records to get the best from his soil. Friends remarked that it was the best-kept vegetable garden they’d ever seen. Stewart leaves Norma – they married in 1969 – children Laura and Peter, and daughter-in-law Jeri.
Stewart’s family thank the contributors and readers of The Northumbrian who made the magazine such a joy for him.